• 0 Posts
  • 6 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 7th, 2023

help-circle

  • Overall, love it. We had a hybrid RAV 4 and wanted to move to a larger vehicle. When we discovered that Toyota was releasing a hybrid Sienna for 2021, we jumped at it. We get ~35mpg on average. And we’ve put just a bit over 55k miles on it since we got it. Maintenance has mostly been routine, though we did have an odd issue with one of the sliding doors filling up with water. According to the tech at the service center, there is a drain which was clogged and needed to be cleared. This was likely exacerbated by the fact that it’s parked outside, in a wooded area. So, it sees a lot of leaf litter. And that is one down side, the back hatch can accumulate leaves and crap in the space between the top of the door and the body of the vehicle. Annoying, but you just have to clean it out on the regular. The adjustment rails for the rear seats are also hard to clean, if anything gets in them. So, that can be annoying.

    As for performance, it moves well enough. It’s a mini-van, so you’re not going to beat a small car off the line, but you do get up to speed at a good clip. The turning radius is surprisingly narrow for such a large vehicle. At speed, the vehicle feels stable and handles ok. I’ll also say that the adaptive cruise control is insanely addictive. I’ve been driving in traffic this week and I can go a long time without touching the pedals. I’d also recommend getting to the trim level where you get the backup camera with the false overview of the vehicle, makes parking super simple.

    We mostly use it for routine tasks like getting groceries or taking the kids places. We also go camping regularly and we can pack all our stuff into the back and put the kayaks on top. Its not a vehicle I’d take off road on anything challenging, but it handles unpaved roads ok.

    So ya, we’ve been happy with it and I’d give it a recommendation.



  • Theoretically, browsers could even stop from the JS engine from being started for the site in the first place.

    The NoScript extension is basically this. Most of the client side stuff is off by default and you can enable it per-domain. It breaks a whole lot of websites, but often in ways where the main content of a website is still readable. Over time, you can build up a list of “allow by default” domains and most of the web you care about works. Though, you may have to spend a moment or two sorting out permissions when you visit a new site.


  • That actually sounds like a reasonable response. Driving assist means that a human is supposed to be attentive to take control. If the system detects a situation where it’s unable to make a good decision, dumping that decision on the human in control seems like the closest they have to a “fail safe” option. Of course, there should probably also be an understanding that people are stupid and will almost certainly have stopped paying attention a long time ago. So, maybe a “human take the wheel” followed by a “slam the brakes” if no input is detected in 2-3 seconds. While an emergency stop isn’t always the right choice, it probably beats leaving a several ton metal object hurtling along uncontrolled in nearly every circumstance.


  • Ya, sadly there is still a lot of useful content in the technical subreddits. So I find myself ending up there via search engines on a fairly regular basis. But, I specifically use the Redirector plugin for Firefox to auto-magically force the use of old Reddit. If I hit the site on my work computer, I’m quickly reminded about why I quit the site.